Ahead of the Curve

The robotics and automation theme has been gaining a lot of attention recently for good reasons. There is an industrial revolution emerging across all industries as they realise that the new tools and applications being developed will be highly disruptive to existing business models. These new technologies cover everything from autonomous cars and delivery drones to surgical tools.

Related images

GERMANY - German second-pillar pension funds should get their own supervisory body, Peter Hadasch, board member at the association of German company pension schemes (VFPK), has told IPE.

In the debate on Solvency II, the VFPK also demanded a clearer separation of regulations relating to occupational pension providers and those relating to insurers.

In an interview, Hadasch, who is also head of the Nestlé Pensionskasse in Germany, went a step further and said he would like to see the supervision of pension funds being separated from that of insurers.

He said the rising level of European legislation to be integrated into the German regulatory framework would make it even more difficult for pension funds to identify the relevant passages.

"This Europeanisation in pension regulation leads to an increase in insurance technicalities, which is in contrast to the German social tradition of occupational pensions," Hadasch said.

Like many industry representatives, he sees the danger of supervisors using insurance standards on insurance-based vehicles like Pensionskassen.

He added that stakeholders such as unions and other employee representatives should be heard more by the supervisor Bafin in discussions on guarantees, risks and safety in the second pillar.

According to Hadasch, pension funds are "more and more turned into competition for financial service providers", with the social aspect - which includes a "certain bond" between the company and the employee - being lost.

In Germany, he sees a "lack of clear separation" between the three pillars of the pension system.

He argued that a strict definition of the first pillar as securing the bare minimum, the second pillar as enabling a certain standard of living and the third pillar as generating additional wealth would facilitate the separation of supervisory bodies.